Winterzeit

Well, I went to the Yacht Club tonight, membership form in hand, ready to sign up, transfer 155 Euro and become a member. Unfortunately, all the lights were out. And no one was there. Thanksgiving isn’t celebrated here, so it wasn’t that. Maybe it was the two inches of snow on the ground. Or the fact that it was still snowing.

Oh, haven’t I mentioned? Winter is here. With a cold, snowy vengeance. It started Tuesday, when large clumpy flakes of snow began to fall, melting immediately upon contact with the cement. Wednesday on my bike to school, I noticed that it was pretty cold, mostly because I’d forgotten my warmest hat and my gloves on the train last week. Shortly thereafter, on my Wednesday morning train ride to school, I noticed that the countryside was covered in snow. This morning, there was a bit more snow. Then, around 3, just before it started to get dark, it started to snow. It is still snowing now, at nearly 10 o’clock.

I cannot wait for tomorrow, when I don’t have to work, and I can just run around in the snow with my camera and take pictures. Or head over to Lübeck for the Weihnachtsmarkt there, which is one of the famous ones. Weihnachtsmarkten are pretty awesome. Ours here in Kiel is fairly small, from what I hear. I haven't actually been around Germany in the winter to know too well. Basically, it's little Christmas village with vendors selling food, chocolate (yes, that's separate from food), trinkets, hats, anything you could ever want to buy as a Christmas present, and Gluehwein. And, if you don't your 1,20 Euro back for the Pfand (deposit) you paid on the mug, you get a souvenir mug! It's a great time.

(This is Luebeck, by the way.  Not Kiel.)

Aside from the snow, this is the least Thanksgiving-y Thanksgiving yet. At least in St. Croix, we celebrated it. And sort of had part of the day off. I worked all day, came home, and watched a movie. Then I made myself a Jess Reale (the awesome Roseway cook) specialty: coconut rice with fish and mango. Ok, normally it’s with fresh mahi and mango salsa, but my supplies were limited. Tuna steak and sliced mango, with hints of lime. It was actually pretty good, but definitely not yet up to Jess standards. Some day, Reale. Some day.

Luckily, I think some people and I are going to make a Thanksgiving dinner this weekend. When, how, what, I don’t know. Hopefully, I’ll find out soon. On the topic of fuzzy Thanksgiving details, I tried to explain to my fifth graders the origins of Thanksgiving today. As long as they got something related to Indians, Pilgrims, food, turkey, or football, I feel my job is done. If only I’d thought of it ahead of time, we could have made hand turkeys. I love those things.

Die Heiligturmer des Todes

I think I've finally reached my zen moment for the Harry Potter movies. For a long time, I was rather critical of them but always hypocritically excited out of a long-standing loyalty to the books.

This afternoon, I saw the first half of the last Harry Potter movie. My memories of the book were a bit fuzzy, but I really couldn't wait another day before seeing the movie. I tried to figure out yesterday when I read the first Harry Potter book. I'm pretty sure I was actually eleven, meaning that these books have been a dominating force for half my life now.

I checked out the theaters in my area. There's the big, fancy, new theater down at the Hauptbahnhof and the kind of sketchy looking independent theater a couple blocks away. I'd been meaning to check out the sketchy little theater, so I headed down there.

I got a late start, so I ended up there about eight minutes before the showing. I was a little worried that I wouldn't end up with a ticket and have to kill time until the next showing. I walked up to the counter, and waited for a minute behind a lady in her late 30s carrying a large pink umbrella. She walked off to her movie, and I stepped up.

Now, some days, my German is so good, people don't guess that I'm not German, let alone an American. Some days, I can hardly get a sentence out. Today was one of those second kinds of days. Somehow, I managed to still buy a ticket for the 2:00 showing. I bought a coke in a fancy glass bottle and a bag of Haribo for the movie.

"Kino 1," the ticket lady said, giving me that look that Germans give when they want to make sure that you've understand what they said but they're not entirely sure that you speak German. I nodded and said, "Ja, danke." Or something along those lines.

I checked my ticket and realized there was no seat assignment on the ticket. Most German theaters, when you buy your ticket, you also get to choose what seat you want to sit in. A very sensible idea, I think. But this ticket didn't have that. I worried and fretted for the half-second it took me to walk into the room and have my eyes adjust.

Guess how many people there were! No, really, guess.

Ok. One. There was one other lady in this theater. This movie came out on Wednesday. What. Then I remembered that it has been literally years since I've seen a Harry Potter movie at a showing other than the opening. I don't actually remember ever seeing a Harry Potter movie not at the opening showing. Maybe this is what it's normally like.

I picked my seat and sat down. Then the lady who'd been in front of me in line came in and sat down. It was us three. The entire movie. Three women who had come alone to see Harry Potter 7. Hilarious.

Anyway, typical German movie. All of the previews play, then there is an ice cream ad. Then, the curtains close, the lights come up and you have one last chance to run to the bathroom or go buy some ice cream. The three of us didn't move. We sat there in an awkward silence waiting. Or at least, I thought it was awkward because I was trying really hard not to burst out laughing at the situation.

The film starts. At this point, I have decided that I am just going to set aside everything that I know is going to happen that I won't like. Like the fact that Deatheaters travel in ominous clouds of black smoke. That's the big one.

I almost choked up when Hedwig died. And that's a big deal for me. I had approximately the same reaction as I did when I read it for the first time at 2 am after buying it in Canada at midnight and driving home. This time I knew it was going to happen. I was impressed.

I thoroughly enjoyed this film, much more so than most of the others (I'm still a big fan of Prisoner of Azkaban), which I had not expected. Oh, did I mention that the entire movie was in German? I don't know when or where there are English showings in Kiel, if there are any, but I will need to see this movie in English some time. It's not that I didn't know what was going on, but I really love British accents.

After the movie, I returned the glass Coke bottle, went grocery shopping and came home. It was nearly 5, so it was totally dark out, because it's winter in Germany.

So, the movie happened, and it was great, though it doesn't feel quite complete because it was also a giant cliffhanger setting you up for the next movie that doesn't come out until JULY. July is a long time away. I'll probably be in America by then. Maybe that's why I couldn't write an actual film review just now. I'll try again later. Possibly.

Schwarz fahren

I forgot the best part of the train ride back to Kiel!

I finally got to see Deutsche Bahn Sicherheit in action. That is, train security.

There were these loud drunks in the same train car as me, I think they might have been Polish or Russian. I kept hearing the word "Ruski", so that's pretty much my only clue. Anyway, I put in my headphones even though my iPod was dead, so I could more easily pretend to ignore them. Just before the conductor came through to collect tickets, they moved.

I could still hear them shouting in whichever part of the train they had moved to. Then the security started to show up. See, Schwarz fahren, or riding without a ticket, is a very expensive offense. Most of German transportation operates on an honor system based on fear. They trust you to buy your tickets, and don't always check them. But, randomly, they do. If caught without a ticket on a bus or a subway, it can cost 40 Euro. Trains are a bit different, because on long trips, they will always check. And the punishment is about twice the price of the ticket you should have bought.

The security dudes ambled through the car once, and I didn't give them a second thought. When the drunk Eastern Europeans came back and sat down a few seats behind me, I started to wonder. The ticket lady came back through asking for tickets (which doesn't happen often) and she was obviously a bit harried. She was a nice older woman, a white-haired German grandma type. She stood behind the security dudes, your typical over six-foot, bulky, tough, security types. They asked the drunks for their tickets.

Security: Can I see your ticket, please? (Touches the guy to make sure he's awake/alive)
Drunk: Don't touch me.
Security: Ticket, please.
Drunk: Don't touch me.

This goes on for a while. The drunk doing the most of the speaking has one of the worst stutters I've ever heard. Also, this entire conversation is taking place in German. And the drunk is using the familiar you, not very polite.

Security: Just stay here, we'll talk when we get to the station.
Drunk: You and me. Single fight. You want to fight?
Security: What? No. I'm not going to fight you.
Drunk: You and me.

There are some teenagers in the car as well, who think this is all pretty hilarious. They are carrying several beers each and one of them gave me a wedding congratulations card that he had found on the seat. It was empty.

Anyway, I didn't get to see the drunk fight the much larger security guard, because I was trying to catch a bus back home and it was late at night, but there was a lot of singing of soccer songs along the platform into the Hauptbahnhof. It was a Bundesliga night, after all.

Eine kurze Reise

I was going to write about school, but school is pretty much the same. Instead, I'm going to write about my mini-vacation! I've decided that to keep myself sane and entertained, I'm going to try to take at least one trip every month, either inside Germany or outside of it. Luckily, travel is fairly cheap. This weekend, I took advantage of 25 Euro tickets anywhere in Germany and went to Weimar and Erfurt, an extremely historical tour.

I made the extremely smart decision to night train it to Weimar, so that I wouldn't have to deal with two different hostels. I left Kiel at 11:21 at night, and got to Hamburg about an hour and twenty minutes later, where I had to wait until 3:30 am for my next train. Lesson: always always always check your layover times. I hung out in the McDonalds in the Hauptbahnhof for a while because it was the only thing open and offered an hour of free internet. I browsed facebook from my iPod and watched the people who come to the Hauptbahnhof McDonalds at 1:30 in the morning. These people included your usual crazies and homeless guys who get kicked out, but also a disproportionately large number of people in costume. It started with a pair of women, both wearing coats and mostly normal looking. Until I realized one was wearing fishnet stockings (and not much else) and a fake leather cowboy hat. But, really, it's Europe. That's not too weird.

Then the vampire walks in. Not like Edward Cullen sparkly vampire, or Buffy vampire, but Dracula: Dead and Loving It vampire. White face makeup, hair slicked back, cheap fake fancy clothes, a short cape.

And then Robin Hood.

But I digress. I finally caught my train, passed out in my window seat until Göttingen, where I had to transfer at about 6:30 am, then fell asleep again until Weimar. I stepped off the train, threw some extra things into a storage locker and walked into town. Unfortunately, at 8 am, most things were still closed. But I wandered around, grabbed some breakfast and took some pictures. Once the tourist info place opened, I bought a tourist card and a walking tour before wandering off to kill some more time at a castle. Well, just the museum. The palace itself is closed in the winter. As I walked back to the walking tour, it started raining. And the guide never checked our tickets. It was a neat little tour, though the guide spoke too fast for me to catch sometimes and we were battling intermittent gale force winds, rain and cold.

Highlights of Weimar (someday, I'll put up the pictures) include Schiller's grave, Goethe's house, the Bauhaus Museum, and all sorts of history.

I hopped a train (that was twenty minutes late) to Erfurt, found my hostel, texted a friend and made a new friend with the girl sharing my hostel room, who apparently spent two years in Salt Lake City as a teenager. So that was pretty cool. I met up with Katha, a friend in Kiel who's from Erfurt and was home for the weekend, and we went out to the Altstadt (the old, medieval part of the city), with some friends of hers. It was pretty fun and we ended up having a few drinks with a priest and running into some French men who only spoke French and very limited English. Though my "Je ne parle pas Francais" convinced one of them that I did and he insisted on continuing to talk to me even though I very obviously did not know what he was saying.

In the morning, I made a beeline for the Cathedral. And then got predictably side-tracked by the fact that Erfurt is very much a medieval city, full of winding pathways and narrow walks and tallish buildings. But! I found it eventually. I spent a good amount of time at both the Cathedral and the Severi Kirche (Severus Church!), and took a lot of pictures. The Severi Kirche had one of the most ornate and impressive organs I have ever seen, and I've been to a lot of European cathedrals at this point.

Afterward was a full half hour to 45 minutes of an increasingly harried adventure entitled "Why don't they tell you where to find bathrooms in guidebooks!?"

Eventually, I set off on the walking tour recommended by the guidebook, still a little bitter about its lack of bathroom advice. I will have to let the pictures explain, once I get them off my camera. For lunch, I had Thuringer Kloese, or Thuringen Dumplings. They are big old potato dumplings and they come in a gravy like soup. That, and the "selbstgebrautes Bier" (self-brewed beer), made for a very good and German lunch.

Unfortunately, the weather in Erfurt was much the same as it had been in Weimar, so I found myself ducking into buildings or churches, or even simply packing away my camera and wishing I had brought my umbrella. I ended up dodging the rain by going to the Anger Museum. Unfortunately, just an art museum, but worth it for the name. And it had some cool portraiture and furniture set-ups.

Overall, I'd say Weimar was charming, but for one day, it's not worth buying (three day) Tourist Card, though the Goethe Museum is worth every Euro penny. It's a nice little sleepy university town that just happens to have housed almost all German intellectuals ever.

Erfurt was great, but I probably could have spent more time and money there. I'll go back. It has one of the first medieval bridges built with houses on it! Tiny medieval pathways, old churches, one of the biggest Weihnachtsmarkts in Germany, it's a great place.

The train back to Kiel was the smoothest of all the transportation on the trip.

And now, I am drowning in graduate school applications. Argh.